The mystery of the missing family - what's become of Tom Phillips and his kids?

Friday, 17 September 2021

Mystery surrounds the disappearance of a family of four at a remote Waikato beach. As time goes on, hope is fading for a happy outcome. Tony Wall reports.

On the desolate coast at Kiritehere​, waves pound the black sand beach with a fearsome fury. When the wind is up, it’s a truly wild place.

Over the past week the weather has been atrocious – driving rain, howling winds and huge seas - the last place you’d want three children to go missing.

Yet that’s the daunting task facing police and search and rescue volunteers as they scour the beach and surrounding landscape looking for a son of the district, Thomas Phillips, 34, and his children Jayda, 8, Maverick, 6, and Ember, 5.

These are the known facts: Tom and the kids, who live in Ōtorohanga, had been at his family farm on Marokopa​ Rd, about 6km inland from Marokopa Beach, on Saturday, September 11. They were last seen by the family late that day.

**READ MORE:

* Mum 'holding out every hope' for children missing on stormy Waikato beach

* Through the dunes and door-to-door in search for missing Waikato family

**

The following day, local Māori who live in caravans and portable cabins on ancestral land at Kiritehere Beach, 5km over a mountain road from Marokopa, noticed Phillips’ 2004, grey-coloured Toyota Hilux parked on the beach, below the tide line.

It’s understood the vehicle was facing the waves. There was no sign of the occupants; the child seats in the back were empty. The keys were under the driver’s side mat; to save the vehicle from being damaged by the sea, locals moved it off the beach.

From the family farm – owned by Tom’s parents Neville and Julia – to the spot where the truck was found is roughly 10km.

On Monday morning Tom’s brother, Ben, who lives on the farm, was notified and came to view the vehicle. He then called police.

Despite extensive searches, including with heat-detecting drones, a helicopter, a fixed-wing plane, an IRB and a jetski, no sign of the family has been found, bar a few “items of interest”.

In the absence of evidence, speculation has swirled.

Did Phillips, who had custody of the children but was separated from their mother, deliberately drive into the sea?

Were they swept away by one of the rogue waves that notoriously strike the area?

Has Tom, an experienced hunter and bushman, “gone camping” with the children?

Although the Phillips family said in a statement that they are hopeful that is the case, they are also preparing for the fact they might never come home.

“I do fear the worst knowing the sea,' Tom’s sister, Roz Pethybridge​, told Newshub. “Spending 27 years on this coast, knowing how rough and dangerous it is, I am worried a rogue wave has caught one of the kids and he's gone in to save them.”

Tom’s uncle, Paul Phillips, told Stuff a rogue wave is the best of the worst-case scenarios, rather than some deliberate act.

“If something has happened to the children, the best-case scenario is that they were washed out to sea, that way it’s an accident.”

The family says there was no noticeable change in Tom’s behaviour on the Saturday.

Jayda, Maverick and Ember didn’t go to school, instead they were home-taught by their father, who himself was home-schooled, apart from a stint at a private school in Hamilton.

They would regularly visit the family farm, named Hepipi for a nearby mountain.

“He whitebaited in the river by the farm, I used to see him up there when I went for a drive,” says 91-year-old Marokopa Beach man Stan Vicary, who says he’s distantly related to Tom. “The kids were driving little motorbikes around the paddock.”

Tom Phillips had worked as a fencer and spent several years in the South Island. He separated from the children’s mother a few years ago and had become a full-time father.

The children’s mother, whose name has not been made public, said in a statement she’s “holding out every hope” the children are safe.

“This is an incredibly difficult time,” she said.

In Ōtorohanga, police have gone through the house where the family live, hoping to find clues. The house, a modest brick bungalow, is owned by Tom Phillips’ parents.

A neighbour, who doesn’t want to be named, says her kids and Tom’s – “lovely little kids” – would interact over the fence and Tom would always say hello.

“He’s a lovely guy. He’s an avid gardener, a jack of all trades. He’s a smart guy, an intelligent guy – he would have the know-how, I would say, for survival.”

The neighbour is struggling to remember when she last saw the family, but says they were home during level 4 lockdown.

It’s an hour’s drive from Ōtorohanga to Marokopa, past the world-famous Waitomo Caves and through dense, native bush, broken only by stunning ancient rock formations and farmland. It’s a primordial landscape – real Footrot Flats country.

At Marokopa Beach, bemused locals watch from their living rooms as police, who have set up a base at the local sports ground, and media drive backwards and forwards through persistent rain.

Aisla​ Mitchell, 82, who has lived in the district for about 60 years and used to be neighbours to the Phillips family, says police have been through her property, looking in surrounding sheds in case the family are hiding out.

The Phillips’ have farmed the area for generations and are well-respected, she says. There were big tides in the area last weekend – she says no-one would survive if they ended up in the water.

Mitchell says the area used to be a lot busier than it is today – one summer about 20 years back, she says, she counted 500 people on the beach. These days it’s mostly “bach people” from Hamilton or Tauranga.

She hasn’t been too fazed by the influx of police and searchers. “I suppose I’m used to it. I used to do nursing and we’ve got the first aid post here. We’ve had about three or four drownings and had the police come out.”

At Kiritehere, the local hapū has set up a dining area in a small shed and is feeding the teams of searchers rotating through.

Kuia Nora Haupokia​, 70, who has lived here all her life, says it was her nephews who found the truck on the beach on Sunday and rescued it. No-one saw the vehicle arrive, she says.

“It was quite rough,” she says. “If it had been left there another night, everything would have been stripped out [by the sea] and just the shell of the vehicle left.

“It’s quite a safe area, it’s only during winter time we get a lot of rough seas. When it’s rough we get very few people come here to the beach. The only one we see is the odd whitebaiter.”

It’s strange that nothing has been found, Haupokia says.

“If there was something to find, a bag or shoe or whatever, they would have picked it up.”

The more time that goes on, she says, the less chance there is of finding the family.

“It’s sad. It's the children we feel for. It’s just a mystery.”

A rāhui, or ban, has been placed on fishing in the area, including the Marokopa River, which hasn’t gone down too well with some whitebaiters, who were enjoying a great run.

“They put a rāhui on it and came and kicked us all off the river and they don’t even know whether they're dead or whether he’s hiding the children,” one man says. “There’s some disappointed people.”

Another whitebaiter was more philosophical. “That’s the end of the whitebaiting, but that’s small-time compared with losing a family.”

The man, who doesn’t want to give his name, says the sea was “huge” last weekend and it’s well known that rogue waves are lurking along this stretch of coast. Tom Phillips would have known that.

“You really shouldn’t be there with kids when it’s like that.”